Funding from the Department of Energy’s ARPA-E agency will support cutting edge research to create transportation fuels from methane

(Warrenville, IL) – Coskata Inc., a technology leader in alternative fuels and chemicals, has been selected to negotiate an award under ARPA-E’s Reducing Emissions Using Methanotrophic Organisms for Transportation Energy (REMOTE) Program. The award will provide funds to further Coskata’s engineering of methanol fermentation into an anaerobic microorganism to enable a low-cost biological approach for liquid fuel production. Coskata’s technology will enable the rapid microbial conversion of methanol to fuels and/or chemicals with high carbon and energy efficiency – a completely new usage for Coskata’s technology platform. In addition, Coskata’s technology could integrate with other technologies that ferment methane to methanol.

“We appreciate the opportunity to work with ARPA-E to realize their vision of developing biological routes for fuel synthesis from methane, with high energy efficiencies and productivity. Coskata continues to be at the forefront of biological gas-to-liquids technology development, and this work with ARPA-E will allow us to stay on the cutting edge,” said William Roe, CEO of Coskata, Inc.

Coskata has been successfully producing ethanol from natural gas for the past five years at its pilot facility in Warrenville, Illinois, and its demonstration-scale facility in Madison, Pennsylvania. Coskata believes natural gas is an attractive feedstock for early commercial projects due to its abundant supply and low cost, and expects to achieve unsubsidized production costs that are significantly lower than competitive approaches to fuels and chemicals production.

“Our technology is uniquely able to biologically transform low cost natural gas into high value products – efficiently and at a very low cost,” said Roe. Coskata is developing plans to build a commercial facility for the production of fuel grade ethanol from natural gas.

Coskata is privately held, and to date has been funded entirely by its equity investors, including Khosla Ventures, The Blackstone Group, Advanced Technology Ventures, GreatPoint Ventures, Total Energy Ventures International, General Motors, and Globespan Capital Partners.

About Coskata

Coskata Inc. is a technology leader in alternative fuels and chemicals. The company’s low-cost, proprietary process converts a wide variety of abundant feedstocks, such as natural gas, wood, garbage, industrial gases and other carbon-containing materials, into fuels and chemicals. Coskata has combined best-in-class synthesis gas production and cleaning technologies with molecular biology and process engineering capabilities to create a novel synthesis gas fermentation technology platform. For more information, please visit www.coskata.com.